Sweet Potato Casserole, A Contest and It's Ok to Stare

With Thanksgiving just 9 days away, I sat down today and started creating my grocery/shopping list. In the past, around this time of year, you would find me rooting through scraps of paper and note cards, trying to pull together all the recipes for those traditional Thanksgiving dishes my family enjoys this time of year. A few years ago, I typed up every single recipe, all pretty and neat. I printed them all out on cute little snowman paper.



Then I headed down to Office Depot and bought a three-ring binder and some nice, mylar sleeves. Now, when it's time to put that shopping list together, I just pull the Thanksgiving/Christmas Recipe Notebook down from the shelf, and all the favorites are right there, tucked neatly away in their little protective sleeves.

A favorite in our Thanksgiving feast is Sweet Potato Casserole. If that's a favorite in your family, but you've never had a recipe you really liked, I think I can help you out.  When it's come to "decorating" the top of our sweet potato casserole in years past, our family always had the "marshmallow vs crunchy topping" debate, some folks liked it one way and some, the other.

In 2002,  I came across a fabulous Sweet Potato recipe. It sounded great, but it was missing a few of the key spicesI remembered my Mother-in-Law had always added to her sweet potato casserole, and I really liked her recipe. But, the problem was that her recipe was not on paper, it was in her head. It was what we call a "put and taste recipe"...you put some stuff in, taste it...then you put some more stuff in and taste it again...until it's just right.

So I took the Southern Living recipe I found, added in a few of the spices I remembered my MIL using, and came up with my own version.  It came out tasting pretty awesome.  One of the best parts was it ended the topping debate because this casserole combines the best of both worlds. You alternate the marshmallow topping with a delicious, easy-to-make, crunchy topping.  Everyone's happy!

Here's a pic of the one I made last year. It's only taken me a year to finally get around to sharing it with you.

Here's the recipe...you'll see my extra little notes at the top showing which spices I also include when I make this each year. If I'd known in 2002, I'd one day be sharing this with the World Wide Web via this thing called a blog, I would have: 1. written neater and 2. not splattered "stuff" all over it. ;-} So please excuse the spots from the pre-mylar sleeve days.

Just click on the pic, and then click on it again, and it will enlarge to HUGE, so you can jot down the recipe. The "put and taste" method is still a good idea...you may want more or less ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg or ground cloves, according to your taste.